


Heartsong

by vegalocity



Series: Eiffel the shipping whore: Soulmate AU edition [1]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Eiffel Backstory headcanons, Eiffel is a pessimistic nerd, Not Season 3 Compliant, Other, Soulmates, but the story is going back on the matenence board so that'll change eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 18:19:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7325560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegalocity/pseuds/vegalocity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heartsongs were garbage.  That was one of the very few mantras that Doug Eiffel had carried his whole life. 'If you can't do it in style then there's no point in doing it' and 'Heartsongs are Garbage' </p>
<p>Heartsongs aren't a guaranteed happy ending, they aren't a guaranteed person to love you. They're nothing but an annoying voice that has the power to hurt you more than anything else. He was glad he was born without one.</p>
<p>He <i>was</i> born without one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartsong

**Author's Note:**

> So... That was quite the bombshell to drop before a 3 month Hiatus huh? Welp, to make up for it let's get some good old fashioned Soulmate fic up in here!
> 
> This fic is going to go over a bunch of different parts of the Hephaestus mission, but they'll be easy to divine if you're all caught up. First one is set before the series.

Heartsongs were garbage. 

He'd known that all of his life. 

From when he was very young and his mother would smile at him with bruises along her neck and bags under his eyes, he knew that a Heartsong was not a happy ending. How could that be when that demon that his mother married would keep her from leaving by simply humming a few bars of whatever song he could remember through his cold, calculated fury. _“without me”_ he'd always said, _“There would be no one to love you. Nobody would divorce you from your Heartsong Miriam, now close that door.”_

She'd told him it was a blessing he could hear nothing, It wasn't common but it wasn't unheard of. No more rare than red hair and Green eyes. But he should be lucky, there was no voice in his head humming the melody of their favorite song; His life and those he shared it with were based entirely on his decisions and his decisions alone. If someone mistreated him he could walk away and dissolve whatever he had with them and nobody could bat an eye.

He'd liked that kind of power growing up, Though at times he couldn't help but feel left out around his peers. His high school years were full of pretending that he did have a voice, Heartsong, a 'chosen person' to be with so he could feel more at home with his friend group. 

Marina, who claimed her Heartsong was a high tenor, but still recognizably male, Darien whom hummed in a high falsetto to match his Heartsong, Sophie, who blushed when she admitted that her Heartsong was a better Alto than she was a soprano, and Manny, who swore he could hear two, and they both sounded an awful lot like the football captain Joaquin and the top honor roll student Maria. 

He'd lied, spun a tale about his, Somebody who was either a low alto or high tenor, hummed a few bars from Smoke on the Water, and shrugged. He claimed he had no idea if it was a boy or a girl. Whoever they were they liked Rock.

Manny slung an arm around his shoulder and said in sympathy _'amigo, if you don't know then don't hope for one over another. You never know how you swing until it's swung.'_

He'd laughed and accepted the words of wisdom, watching Manny begin to tune the guitar he'd smuggled onto campus.

But no, Douglas Speigulman had no Heartsong, and frankly he was one of the lucky ones. 

It wasn't like he was uninterested in romance, and he definitely wasn't uninterested in sex, He just... didn't understand why a voice in your head had to dictate who you had to be with until the end of your life. 

He'd think back to that day when he was six, the bruises up his mother's arms as she told him to be thankful. That he had the option to leave if someone wasn't treating him right. And he felt powerful.

He changed his name when he turned eighteen. He took his mother's Maiden name in her memory.

The final papers came through, his driver's license updated only a few weeks before he enlisted, he didn't have the grades for college and the army was the only way he could get away from that demon that destroyed his mother before he was even in Junior high. 

In the army Douglas Speigulman became Doug Eiffel.

He'd served for a single term, all it would take for his father to forget he existed and give him an opening. He got high scores in marksman training and a few others, was honorably discharged with low scores in most other things; and eventually, years later, one dissolved marriage, one child he loved more than any voice in his head could have received liberated from a woman he'd rather never speak to again, and one jail sentence later, he ended up in the last place he'd ever expected.

Space.

Honestly at this point he felt like his life couldn't get any more ridiculous, so why not let this Cutter guy let him serve his remaining prison time in Outer. Freaking. Space. 

When he came home he would still have to stay away, but his daughter would be all the more closer to eighteen. And she'd remember what he'd done, what he'd tried to do, what he'd tried to save her from. 

And when she had legal custody over herself, she'd lift the restraining order, and he could see her again, talk to her again. 

She was so young, maybe it was just a pipe dream at this point; but he was allowed to have those, he thought. 

Maybe it had been a mistake to file for divorce, then she wouldn't have been able to pull the 'don't take my baby from me' card, then he wouldn't have had to steal her away, then he wouldn't have been sent to freaking Jail for doing the right goddamn thing. 

But then he'd still be married to a woman that embodied everything he'd ever hated in his father. 

It was a Catch 22, either way his little Alena suffered, and either way he suffered too. 

At least here, on the Hapheastus, he was in control of his suffering. 

It was something he'd always felt power in, control. He was in control of his life, he was in control of his own destiny, he was in control of who he could be with and who he could walk out on.

And here he was in control of his own suffering. 

He'd met Willow on a Songless message board, something he'd taken up on a whim after he'd rented his first apartment in Santa Barbra, which, at the time, was as far away from Albany as he could get. 

She'd moved them to LA, he'd tried to steal Alena and find somewhere even Willow couldn't find them, New Orleans had been the plan. 

He'd served in peacetime on a base in the Carribean. 

And once he was back on Earth he was thinking... maybe another big city. Seattle? Portland? No farther east than Chicago. 

“Officer Eiffel? Your talent for the evening?”

Sometimes escapism and silently moping about his pathetic life was the only shield he had against the Commander's 'morale building' sessions.

It was the second 'Talent Show' that Commander Minkoski had arranged ever since they'd started orbit. The first one was a 'rousing success', and by that he clearly meant it went horribly, terribly, wrong. 

How was he supposed to know that blowing Smoke rings wouldn't only set the oxygen on fire but also react badly against the Tesla coil production Hilbert had set up?

For some reason instead of scrapping it and doing something else, or even better, cancelling the slot entirely and let everyone have the night off, the Commander had decided to give it another raring try. _'We just didn't have the best foot forward last time! Now that everyone's prepared and everyone knows the acceptable talents to produce, we can get things to work!'_ Hera had even backed her up about it too! _'Just give it a chance Officer Eiffel!'_ she'd chided him practically nonstop until he finally got his butt out of the communications room. _'You never know, maybe she's right and now that everyone's going to be prepares it'll be fun!'_

There was nothing about this even remotely fun, he felt like he should have made some kind of bet with Hera about that. 

He had to do something, if he didn't, claimed he was a talentless individual and not worth the time she'd put into letting him perform, she'd not only get angry and put extra hours on his shift or something of similar Vader-Level Pettiness, she'd take over the stage again with more of her awful Beat poetry. 

Honestly he'd rather sit through 'Spock's Brain' a couple dozen times before willingly subjecting himself to that.

He pushed himself in the general direction of the 'stage' area they had cleared up in the hangar bay and shoved a hand into his suit pocket. 

What could he do? While his smoke rings were rather impressive he was unwilling to sacrifice another pack of his stash for the sake of showboating. 

And there was the whole oxygen on fire thing, but it was mainly the not getting his packs taken from him thing that he cared about.

So what else could he do? He couldn't like, dance in Zero Gravity, and Playing the Pit would be too crass even for him. He glanced over his 'audience'

Minkowski folded her arms where she floated, an unimpressed glare trained on him and tapping her foot for show. Hilbert was hunched over himself, toying with some project or another and every so often adding drops from a green syringe into the flask.

“Any time now, Eiffel.” Minkowski waved a hand sarcastically, and for a moment Eiffel had half of a mind to go back to the Playing the Pit idea.

He began to tap a rhythm with his free hand, quickly filing through his mental itinerary of songs he'd memorized before coming onto a conclusion.

He wasn't someone with one favorite song, like most people, he had at least a dozen on shuffle and repeat. If he had a Heartsong he'd pity the poor fool, their head would have to be a constant Doug Eiffel Concert.

“Just a Small town Girl, living in a lonely world  
She took the midnight train going anywhere...”

And that was when the first part of what he'd later consider 'The World's Wierdest Romance Story' began. Though he'd honestly had nowhere close to an idea of it at the time.

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY KIDS HERE'S THE THING
> 
> I've got a problem, and that problem is: I ship Eiffel with literally all of the Hephaestus crew; and While this setup is completely ambiguous with it just being Eiffels 'Soulmates are garbage' ideals, I have a bunch of different spins of the story from here on out based on what ship it would end up being. I can't pick between any of them, and so I ask for your assistance. I may end up doing all of 'em anyway, but I can at least decide which one to do first
> 
> EDIT 8/1/16: Okay so as it turns out There is no reader consensus, there's been a perpetual tie between Heiffel and Eiffera pretty much since the ding dang poll went up, so here's what I'm gonna do. This is gonna be it's own contained oneshot, and I'm gonna post the results as their own stories, since both are gonna multichapter probably. Hera held the lead for a little longer so hers will go first, so fluffy AIXhuman relations will be coming (though Hilbert's will probably be longer, I'm gonna get that 20k of angst and pining even if I have to do it myself) Minkowski will be last and hers may or may not be multichapter, the Minffel was not strong in this one (and I probs won't do Lovelace since absolutely noone wanted that story)


End file.
